Bangladesh has arrested 29 people from an LGBT gathering here, a rare crackdown on gay men in the conservative Muslim-majority country where homosexuality is prohibited, officials said on Friday.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite police unit that made the arrests, said those arrested, mostly students aged between 20-30 years, had travelled from across the country and were picked up in the raid on Thursday.

RAB’s duty officer Abdur Rashid said they were arrested as homosexuality was prohibited under law and they carried out the raids responding to complaints by residents in the neighbourhood. “We, however, did not find them involved in sexual activities while they were partying. But we found contraband sex stimulating drugs from them,” the official said. adding: “We planned to accuse them under drug-related laws since they were not instantly found to be engaged in unnatural sexual activities at the scene.” Read more via the Hindu